D 515 
.U6 
1918a 
Copy 1 



D 515 
U6 

1918a 
Copy 1 



* German 
Whisper 



By HARVEY O'HIGGINS 

Associate Chairman, 
Committee on Public Information 




S -2.471 3 



Issued by 

THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INFORMATION 
The Secretary of State 
The Secretary of War 
The Secretary of the Navy 
George Creel 



I 



0. °* D * 
SEP tt »» ,S 



r 









t, 

THE GERMAN WHISPER 



Mr. Citizen, you are now on the firing line. 

Imperial Germany is not merely attacking on 
the western front. She is attacking in every com- 
munity in the United States. 

*Her assault is under the direction of the German 
general staff. It has been prepared as carefully as 
the strategy and tactics of a military drive. As in 
Russia and in Italy, so here also a campaign of 
German propaganda — a gas attack of poisonous lies 
and rumors and false reports — has been launched 
successfully and is now under way. 

The collapse of Russia was not a victory for 
German arms. It was a triumph of German propa- 
ganda. And the defeat of the Italian armies was 
achieved only after German agents, working with 
rumors, slanders, counterfeit newspapers, forged 
letters, and all the other weapons of German 
treachery, had opened an impregnable Italian 
position to the successful assault of an inferior 
German force. 

America is now the strongest enemy that Ger- 
many has. A weakening of our public morale is as 
necessary to German success as the weakening of 
Russia's was. And the attempt to weaken us has 
already developed two main lines of movement. 
The first aims to destroy our unity of action with 
our allies by setting us against the French, the 
British, and the Japanese. The second proposes 
to destroy our domestic unity by encouraging 
among us every sort of class dissension, religious 
difference, racial prejudice, and political quarrel. 



Slandering the French 

The officials of the Red Cross report that many- 
loyal mothers are refusing to let their daughters 
volunteer as nurses in France because of rumors of 
immoral conditions in the hospitals there. A de- 
tailed story has been circulated to the effect that 
200 Red Cross nurses have recently been returned 
on a transport from abroad and secretly removed to 
maternity hospitals here as patients. There is not 
a word of truth in the story. It has been investi- 
gated by a Federal grand jury in New York City 
and found to be false. German sympathizers 
caught circulating it have been interned. The 
nurses in service in our hospitals in France have the 
same discipline and protection that they have here 
— and need it as little. The story has been in- 
vented to hamper the work of the Red Cross and to 
prejudice us against our French allies. 

A similar aim is evident in the reports of drunken- 
ness and immorality among our forces at the front. 
These charges, most circumstantially made, were 
even taken up by the national leaders of our pro- 
hibition societies and purity leagues, and an appeal 
was sent out to the readers of the religious press 
asking them to protest to President Wilson. The 
number of these protests showed the success of the 
slander. 

As a matter of fact, no liquor ration is served to 
our troops either here or abroad. No Army canteen 
sells alcoholic liquors. By Gen. Pershing's orders, 
our soldiers in France are forbidden "either to buy 
or to accept as gifts from the inhabitants," any 
"alcoholic beverages other than light wine or beer." 
As there is little beer sold in France, Gen. Pershing 
reports: "Men who drink are thus limited to the 
light native wine used by all French people. Even 



found fault with its pei formance . The difficulty- 
is to catch and contradict the untrue stories with 
which these critics are sometimes deceived. 
• A great many such stories have been allowed to 
go unrefutcd, because the Government officers who 
could reply to them have been too busy to do so, 
consequently an undue amount of pessimism about 
the country's war work has been allowed to accu- 
mulate. This pessimism, being confronted by the 
official optimism of Washington, usually explodes 
in an attack of bitterness. It forgets that an 
officer who is working 18 hours a day is invariably 
cheerful. His activity alone, if not his accomplish- 
ment, makes him optimistic. During the first 
crucial days of the German successes on the western 
front the New York newspapers reported that 
among the anxious crowds of citizens before the 
bulletin boards the men in uniform were remarkable 
for their cheerfulness. "In the quiet crowds that 
poured along Broadway," said one report, "there 
came a group of French sailors in their jaunty 
uniforms singing gaily. Somehow things seemed 
brighter as they passed. Strangely the men in 
khaki seemed most indifferent to the news from 
the front." Washington's cheerfulness is frequently 
of the same sort. The fact that "somehow" things 
have not seemed brighter because of that cheerful- 
ness is perhaps due to the German whisperer in the 
anxious crowds. The critic has his place and his 
privileges, but certainly no harm would be done if 
the German agents, who so often start the hissing, 
were turned over to the police. 

Mr. Citizen, if one of these German whisperers 
starts buzzing in your ear, send his name and ad- 
dress to the Department of Justice at Washington, 
D. C. If you do not know, or cannot find out, who 
he is, at least report his story to the Committee on 

29 



Public Information, 8 Jackson Place, Washington, 
D. C, so that an official denial of his slander may- 
be obtained and circulated as soon as possible. 
The Committee is carrying on a nation-wide cam- 
paign against these poisonous rumors through its 
speakers, its pamphlets, and its press releases. It 
needs your help. It needs the help of all loyal 
citizens. 






30 



this is discouraged among our troops in e very- 
possible way. I hope to secure the cooperation of 
the French Government to prevent the sale of all 
liquors and wines to our troops. Personally, I 
favor prohibition in the Army, but it is impracti- 
cable and inadvisable to issue orders that can not be 
enforced without the cooperation of the French 
Government." 

Slandering Our Soldiers 

The charge of drunkenness among our Expedi- 
tionary Forces is a pro-German lie designed to 
alarm the mothers and fathers of the boys who 
have gone to France. The stories of immorality 
consequent upon drunkenness are equally baseless. 

When the recruits for the National Army were 
first assembled in our cantonments, the medical 
examiners sent as many as 400 out of every 1,000 
men to the hospitals to be treated for venereal 
diseases. The hospital admission rate for venereal 
diseases in those camps has since been as low as 
64.4 per 1,000, and the rate for the men in our 
expeditionary forces in France has been as low as 
44.2 per 1,000. That is to say, the statistics of 
the Surgeon General's office show that our soldiers 
in France have been almost ten times as free from 
the effects of immorality as the same sort of men 
were when they were first drafted into the Army. 
Physical training and strict military discipline have 
improved the health of the troops in this respect as 
in all others. 

Using Popular Prejudice 

These slanders upon the nurses and upon the 
troops are typical of the work of the German general 
staff. It has been their policy in their campaigns of 
propaganda to circulate in an enemy country the 

5 



falsehoods that most appeal to that country's 
prejudices. America, in its ignorance of all France 
outside of the tourist haunts of Paris, is easily- 
imposed upon with stories of French vice. The 
German propagandist knows that. He is planning 
to take advantage of it for his own purposes. He- 
is making a drive upon the sentiments and emotiens 
of American women just as he first attacked the 
susceptibilities of the Italian women behind the 
lines in preparing the way for the Italian defeat. 
How well he is succeeding in America is shown by a 
passage in that appeal for a protest to President 
Wilson which was printed in the religious press. 

It pointed out: "Throughout this country a feel- 
ing of bitterness, dangerous in the extreme, is 
arising and gazing with menacing eyes toward 
France. The mothers who have reared sons strong 
and clean, and who have given them with glad, 
aching hearts — women who have loved France 
and glorified her — are now muttering that our 
boys are wanted for the profits of their debauch- 
ery and not to take their deaths in strength 
and cleanliness.' ' Such mothers are the victims of a 
German falsehood. So is the writer who thus 
described them and protested against the "de- ' 
bauchery" of their soldier sons. The reports of 
immoral conditions in, France and the campaigns 
of protest against those conditions are equally the 
work of German agents, assisted by the prejudiced 
credulity of their American victims. 

Mr. Citizen, the Committee on Public Informa- 
tion wishes to warn you against these snares. 
There will be more of them. In Italy anonymous 
letters were sent to the soldiers from their homes 
accusing their wives of infidelity. Our military 
censorship prevents such tactics among our men, 
but similar impostures will doubtless be attempted. 

6 



Already forged letters pretending to be from soldiers 
in France have been found in the lobbies of New 
York theaters, as if accidentally dropped there by 
the recipients. The letters are always in the 
angular handwriting of persons accustomed to using 
German script. So far they have contained little 
but alarming falsehoods about the alleged slaughter 
of American regiments. 

Slandering the British 

In order to set us against our British allies, 
several sorts of "whispering propaganda" are being 
used. There is the story that American soldiers 
are reeling around the streets of London, drunk. 
It has been disproved. There is the charge that 
while we are stinting ourselves to save grain the 
English are using it to make whisky — although we 
are .saving and shipping chiefly wheat, which is 
little used in distilling, and the figures from England 
show that the English liquor traffic has been de- 
creased by the war almost as much as ours. And 
there is the report that millions of British soldiers 
are held in England while the allies are "doing their 
fighting for them" — a falsehood that is sufficiently 
discounted by the fact that the British Empire has 
7,500,000 men in the army and navy, outside of 
India, Africa, etc.; that of these 70 per cent are 
English and Welsh, 8 per cent Scotch, 6 per cent 
Irish, and 16 per cent Canadians, Australians, 
etc.; and that the casualties among them have been 
76 per cent English, 10 per cent Scotch, 6 per cent 
Irish, and 8 per cent Canadian, Australian, etc. 

The German mischief-makers who first supplied 
arms for the revolt in Ulster against Home Rule, 
and subsequently shipped arms for the revolt of the 
Home Rulers — these same oromoters of disunity are 



now furnishing the Irish in America with any story, 
any argument, any slander that can arouse anti- 
English prejudice among us. On the Pacific coast, 
in the same way, they are rattling the dry bones of 
the yellow peril. The average organ of publicity 
that was pro-German before our declaration of 
war, no matter, how pro- American it now pretends 
to be, almost invariably uses the anti-British and 
the anti- Japanese appeals. And just as the Zim- 
merman note tried to unite Mexico and Japan 
against us, so the enemy of our unity alternates 
denunciations of the yellow peril with appeals for a 
declaration of war against Mexico. 

The German sympathizer who tells you the story 
of how a discharged Japanese servant boasted 
that the Japanese would soon "own America," 
invariably couples it with a lying account of how 
all Washington is saying that "the next war will be 
with Great Britain about the Panama Canal." On 
the Italian front, before the successful German 
drive, counterfeits of Milan newspapers were circu- 
lated, containing accounts of how bread riots had 
been suppressed in north Italian towns by British 
soldiers imported for that purpose, after Italian 
troops had refused to fire upon their own people. 
All over Italy the argument was used that the 
nation was merely "pulling England's chestnuts, 
out of the fire." The same argument is now doing 
duty here, in spite of the fact that the United States 
only went to war in self-defense after we had en- 
dured every form of German outrage and injustice 
and exhausted every means of peaceful appeal. 

Many of the agents of this sort of propaganda in 
America, both publishers and "whisperers," are 
protected by their American citizenship and by the 
traditional freedom of speech which our laws permit. 
The Government has no power to reach them. 

8 



They are often the innocent victims of guiltier 
minds. It is only possible to warn the public of 
the infection which they spread, and to mark them 
as "carriers" of that German propaganda bacillus 
which completely enervated the strength of Russia 
and so nearly broke down the Italian power of self- 
defense. 

Working on Religious Prejudices 

In the campaign to promote domestic disunity 
among us, the pro-German rumor-monger has been 
even busier. He is working here, exactly as he 
worked in Italy, upon religious prejudices. He has 
spread the report that the Masonic orders have 
protested to the Government against the Knights of 
Columbus being permitted to build recreation huts 
in the camps. No such protest was ever made. He 
has circulated stories that Catholic nuns were re- 
fused permission to do Red Cross work unless they 
wore Red Cross uniforms, and that Catholic sol- 
diers — and Jewish soldiers — were being discrim- 
inated against by Red Cross officials. All such 
stories are outright inventions. At the same time 
he passes around every kind of rumor of Catholic 
disloyalty, such as the famous one that President 
Wilson's secretary, a Catholic, had been executed 
for treason. He has filled the mails with printed 
copies of an alleged "bloody oath of the Knights of 
Columbus," giving it on the pretended authority of 
the Congressional Record. It was printed in tli3 
Record because it was read into a debate before tli3 
House of Representatives on an election protest, in 
order that it might be denounced as a forgery and a 
libel upon a Catholic candidate. A pro-German 
agent has been caught distributing copies of this 
"bloody oath" in New Jersey and sent to prison 
for it. 



9 



In Spain and the Catholic countries of South 
America the Kaiser poses as "the Champion of 
Catholic Bavaria and Catholic Austria against 
Protestant England, infidel France, and socialistic 
Italy, the enemy of the Vatican." He does not 
preserve that pose in Catholic Belgium or Catholic 
Poland. And in America the Kaiserite uses this 
very claim of the Kaiser to arouse enmity against 
the Catholics, just as in Italy the German agent 
used it in an unsuccessful attempt to seduce the 
Italian Catholics, and now in America accuses the 
Italian Catholics of having succumbed to the seduc- 
tion. As a matter of fact, the Catholic chaplains in 
the Italian Army were among the first to discover 
this propaganda among the soldiers, reported it to 
the officers, and combated it diligently. 

Various persons and publications that made a 
living out of sectarian animosities before the war, 
are unconsciously doing the work of the enemy by 
assisting the spread of anti-Catholic and anti- 
Protestant slanders. They can only be stopped by 
an appeal to public reprobation. They are repre- 
senting the trouble in Ireland as purely a religious 
trouble, and the opposition to conscription in 
Quebec as the same sort of thing. Even Rudyard 
Kipling recently fell into the trap and denounced 
the Pope and the Kaiser and the neutrals in one 
breath. Such denunciations overlook the fact 
that Cardinal Mercier, the Catholic prelate of 
Belgium, has been the most effective popular op- 
ponent of the Kaiser that Europe has produced. 
This is a war of nations, not of creeds. Prussia is 
as Protestant a nation as England is, and Belgium 
and Poland as Catholic as Austria. Anyone who 
raises the religious question in America to-day is 
acting as a German agent, whether he knows it 
or not, as truly as if he were blowing up muni- 

10 



tion plants. All loyal citizens should discourage 
him. 

Aggravating Our Race Problems 

Among the Negroes the German propagandist 
first began work in the South and failed. He has 
been more successful in the Middle West, where 
the presence of a large loyal German population 
gives him better cover . He is promising the Negroes 
that the Kaiser will give them social equality with 
the whites. An agent, recently captured in New 
York, was offering the Negroes a "Black Republic" 
under German protection, and he was denounced to 
the authorities by the Negroes themselves. An- 
other was spreading reports of discriminations 
against Negro soldiers in the camps, reporting that 
the Negroes were being trained as "shock troops" 
to be sacrificed in the front lines, and even circulat- 
ing a story that the German military authorities 
had ordered all Negro prisoners killed. Thus far 
this sort of German effort to aggravate a race prob- 
lem has been an absurd failure. Its only danger is 
that it may lead to charges of disloyalty against our 
colored citizens and a suspicion of them which is 
not justified. To allow the German intrigue to 
arouse a prejudice against the Negro would aid the 
enemy as much as if he succeeded in organizing the 
Negro in disloyalty. Discourage such a prejudice 
wherever you find it, Mr. Citizen. It is being 
promoted by the Kaiserite. 

Working on the Farmer 

In order to obtain a supply of castor oil for 
lubricating aeroplane engines the Government con- 
tracted for the planting of 85,000 acres of castor 
beans in the Gulf States. After the contracts had 
been divided among subcontractors German agents 

11 



circulated a report among the farmers that castor 
beans exhaust the soil. There is no truth in that; 
but before the Government learned what was 
going on many of the farmers had canceled their 
contracts. The he has now been contradicted and 
the beans are being grown. 

This is typical of German methods not only in 
this country but abroad. In Italy the propaganda 
that opened the Italian lines was preceded by a 
long drive against the farming communities. An 
agrarian sentiment was procured against the war, 
against the high cost of labor and necessary supplies, 
against the drafting of farm workers, and against 
the Government control of the price of wheat and 
breadstuff s. Crop shortages resulted and a bread 
famine ensued. A similar campaign is now pro- 
ceeding in America. 

Alien-enemy farmers have been secretly counseled 
to hoard their wheat; several such hoarders have 
been caught by the Food Administration and their 
grain has been confiscated. For the loyal farmer a 
concerted attempt is being made to present hiis war- 
time problems to him as a class grievance. He is 
being assured that he alone is being hampered by 
price-fixing while all other industries and businesses 
are left free to profiteer. Men of undoubted 
loyalty, eager to increase our food supplies, are 
innocently assisting the German program by such 
statements as the following from a recent address 
made to eastern farmers by a college president: 

"Why should the food producer be singled out 
for the role of a public benevolent institution?" 
"Why deny the farmer alone the market price of 
his skill and labor?" "Why attempt to regulate 
the prices of farm products?" "We have tried that 
experiment with wheat, and we have sent the 
price of corn above wheat, compelling the farmer 

12 



to feed wheat to his poultry and animals and dis- 
couraging him in the planting of winter wheat." 
"In spite of all appeals, the farmers have not 
planted substantially more winter wheat than they 
planted in 1914. I believe it is no exaggeration to 
say that we are confronted with the danger of 
starvation in the next 12 months. The energies of 
our farmers are paralyzed by price fixing and the 
fear of price fixing. Does the Government want to 
stimulate agricultural production? Then strike the 
shackles off the farmer and leave him as free as 
other producers. In the name of common sense, 
of justice, and of patriotism, I make this appeal to 
the President and Congress." 

Farmer Not Discouraged 

As a matter of fact, it is not true that the Ameri- 
can farmer has been discouraged in the planting of 
winter wheat. He has seeded this year 42,170,000 
acres of winter wheat. That is 2,000,000 acres 
more than the year before, 150,000 acres more than 
ever before, and 7,000,000 acres more than his 
average acreage before the European war began. 
The December estimate of the Department of 
Agriculture placed his yield of winter wheat at 
122,000,000 bushels more than last year's crop. 
And the reports that have since been received by 
the department indicate that the December esti- 
mate was too low by 30,000,000 bushels. 

• It is equally untrue that the "price of corn has 
been sent above wheat." The figures collected 
by the Department of Agriculture show that the 
average prices received by the farmer during the 
three years previous to war were, roughly, 86.9 
cents a bushel for wheat and 66.5 cents for corn, 
and the average war prices which he has received 
have been $2.00.6 for wheat and $1.38.8 for corn. 



n 



The increase over the prewar prices has been 131 
per cent in the case of wheat and only 109 per 
cent in the cake of corn. Difficulties in transporta- 
tion have altered the relation of these prices in some 
localities, especially in the East, but for the farmer 
generally the price of wheat has been consistently 
higher than the price of corn. 

The Truth About Price Fixing 

It is not true that there has been an attempt "to 
regulate the prices of farm products." There has 
been no attempt to regulate the price of any farm 
product but wheat. The allied Governments in 
Europe had set up single agencies to buy food sup- 
plies in America. Their purchases of American 
wheat were sufficient to control the price. They 
could drain America of its wheat and leave our 
poorer classes to starve. In order that rich and 
poor might be treated alike, it was necessary to 
establish a Government control of price and dis- 
tribution. And the price of $2.20 a bushel for 
No. 1 northern wheat, based on Chicago, was agreed 
upon by an independent commission, appointed by 
President Wilson, upon which commission the 
farming community was represented by 6 members *■ 
out of 11. 

In some instances the Food Administration has 
intervened, at the request of the producers, to ob- 
tain a settlement in a local dispute about the price 
of milk. In the case of pork products the Food 
Administration, on the recommendation of the 
producers, undertook to use the purchases of the 
allied Governments for the purpose of maintaining 
a minimum price for live hogs in Chicago. Beyond 
this invited assistance in the case of milk and pork, 
and the regulation of the price of wheat, the Food 
Administration has not interfered with thp price of 



14 






farm products, except in so far as the control of 
sugar prices has affected the price of sugar beets. 

There has been a report in circulation that the 
Food Administration has fixed the price of tomatoes. 
It is untrue. The Food Administration has not 
done anything of the sort, nor tried to do it. It 
sent out to tomato growers an announcement that 
the Army and Navy were ready to receive tenders 
for canned tomatoes based on a stated price per 
ton for raw tomatoes. No canner was required to 
bid, and no limit was set upon the price that he 
might ask. He was simply told that he might 
make an offer to the Army and Navy on the basis 
mentioned, if he wished. The Food Administration 
has no power to fix the price of tomatoes and has 
shown no desire to obtain the power. 

The Food Administration undertook a campaign 
of education to persuade the American people to 
save meat, so that our allies abroad might have 
sufficient. The German submarines prevented us 
from transporting our increased surplus to Europe. 
It accumulated in the cold-storage warehouses, 
and it backed up on the farms. The Food Ad- 
ministration consequently stopped its campaign for 
meatless days. It met with the representatives of 
the live-stock associations and undertook to do 
everything possible to clear out the "freezers" by 
' hastening shipments to Europe and by increasing 
the Government purchases of the higher grades of 
beef. There was, consequently, criticism of the 
Food Administration for having preached the 
necessity of meatless meals. The propagandists did 
not blame the submarines. They blamed the Food 
Administration in an attempt to divert the farmer's 
resentment against Germany into a resentment 
against the Government's measures of food con- 
trol. 

15 



The Truth About Profiteering 

Those measures of food control have been directed 
more against the middleman than the producer. 
While fixing for the farmer an arbitrated price for 
his wheat, they have established a system of licens- 
ing, by which millers, bakers, grocers, and whole- 
sale and retail dealers have been prevented from 
profiteering on the farmer's dollar. The Fuel 
Administration has fixed the price of coal, because 
the miner would not work for reasonable wages as 
long as the mine owner was making an unreasonable 
gain. Profiteering in Army and Navy contracts 
and in shipbuilding has been stopped by the power 
obtained from Congress to fix the price at cost plus 
a reasonable profit; and the increase in cost has gone 
to the workman, not to his employer. All profiteer- 
ing has not yet been ended. The way to end it has 
not been found in any country. But the tax on 
excess profits and on swollen incomes confiscates the 
illicit harvest and pours it into the country's war 
chest. The grievances that remain are not class 
grievances. They are chiefly the inevitable com- 
mon hardships due to a war that has drawn millions 
of productive workers into the world's armies and 
increased the cost of the necessaries of life by de- 
creasing the available supply. In that hardship 
the farmers share, as we all share. 

Kaiserites on Both Sides 

Along with this campaign to set the farmer against 
the Government's war measures there has been 
proceeding a twin campaign to arouse feeling 
against him by accusing his western farmers' 
leagues of disloyalty. That is equally a work in 
aid of the enemy. The western farmers have con- 
tributed their quotas to enlistments and to the 

16 



drafts as loyally as any citizens. They have sub- 
scribed to the Liberty Loans and contributed to the 
war relief work with unfailing patriotism. They 
have had their quarrels with the men whom they 
suspected of exploiting them, just as labor has had 
its quarrels with its employers. But it is an 
economic quarrel, and as long as it is conducted 
without interfering with the Nation's war work 
the charge of disloyalty is itself traitorous. In 
all these disputes it is certain that enemy agents 
•will be found on both sides. They at once preach 
violence among the I. W. W.'s, and lead mobs to 
attack workmen accused of being I. W. W.'s. 
They play the same game in every quarrel with 
which they can hope to divide the country. Be- 
ware, Mr. Citizen, of any attempt to make you 
believe that any class of American citizens, as a 
class, are disloyal. It is a German lie. 

The Prussian Socialist 

The leaders of a section of the Socialist Party 
here, as in Italy and in Russia, are attempting to 
do the Kaiser's work, and are obtaining German 
support in it. They are trying to divide the 
country in a class quarrel that would leave us as help- 
less to resist the German military autocracy as the 
Russians are. This section of socialists was first 
prganized as a political party in America by German 
exiles. They have always been led by German 
sympathizers. It has been a rule among them 
that a man is not a socialist unless he pays dues to 
the party leaders, accepts all the party nominees of 
those leaders without question, subscribes to every 
plank of the party platform, and votes only a 
straight ticket under the party emblem. He did 
these things or he was expelled. That is a Prussian 
idea of organized servility and unquestioning 

17 



obedience. It has succeeded in Germany, but it 
has never succeeded here. 

At the outbreak of the war in Europe the Prussian 
Government, by means of false news and distorted 
dispatches, made the German people believe that 
their country had been invaded by Russia and 
attacked by France, and for a time all the German 
socialists supported their Government's war of 
imperial conquest, believing that it was a war of 
self-defense. Since then the independent socialists 
in Germany have learned that they were deceived. 
They are now fighting the German Government in 
Germany as the independent socialists are fighting 
the German Government here, under the leadership 
of men like John Spargo and Charles Edward 
Russell. 

Soon after the war broke out a member of the 
German Reichstag named David made a speeqh in 
which he said: "Germany must squeeze her enemies 
with a pair of pincers; namely, the military pincer 
and the pacifist pincer. The German armies must 
continue to fight vigorously whilst the German 
socialists encourage and stimulate pacifism among 
Germany's enemies." It is upon this stimulation 
of pacifism in America that qur Prussian socialists 
have been most busily engaged. They have been 
recently denounced by the Social Democratic 
League of America and the Jewish Socialist League, 
under the leadership of John Spargo, J. G. Phelps 
Stokes, William Edlin, and Henry L. Slobodin. 

The work of our pro-German socialists has been 
nullified by the unjust terms of German peace 
forced upon the Russians and by the continued 
German invasion of Russia since peace was signed. 
The same events have greatly strengthened the 
loyal support of the war by American socialists. 
Consequently there seems to be now no danger of a 

18 



successful Bolshevist faction in this country pro- 
cured by German agents. We have passed that 
danger point as the British have passed it. The 
independent socialists in all countries are fighting 
the Kaiser and his commercial war of imperial 
conquest. And when the pro-German socialist in 
this country asks, "Why do you blame German 
socialists for supporting their Government and yet 
blame American socialists for not supporting their 
Government?" the answer is, "Because in both 
cases they are wrong; in both cases they are fighting 
against freedom and democracy in support of 
military conquest and autocratic rule." 

Another German Trick 

In our Western States another sort of class 
cleavage is being widened by German sympathizers. 
There, for a decade past, a political struggle has 
been proceeding between reformers and corrup- 
tionists. In many States the reformers have won. 
They have broken the political bosses and ousted 
their henchmen. When the Government boards 
at Washington called for volunteers in the work of 
organizing the trade and industry of the country 
many of the defeated political enemies of the western 
commonwealths volunteered for service and were 
accepted. The assignment of such men to war 
work has been used "to give the war a black eye." 
It is argued that the dark powers which so long 
exploited the West are "running the war." It is 
hinted that the Government at Washington is 
innocently under their control . And German agents 
and German sympathizers are using that argument 
and giving that hint. 

It was inevitable that some discredited politicians 
should find their way into the ranks of a volunteer 
army of war workers so hastily assembled. Such 

19 



men would be eager for the chance to rehabilitate 
themselves. They might even be genuinely loyal 
to the country at large, though they have never 
been loyal to the best interests of their home com- 
munities. It is as absurd for anyone to turn 
against the war because of the participation of these 
men as it would be absurd for him to withdraw 
from the trenches if he found old political enemies 
serving beside him. It is his business to see that 
political crooks in war work are watched as care- 
fully as suspected renegades would be watched in 
camp. Meanwhile it is a work in aid of the enemy 
to let suspicion of such men weaken support of the 
Government in its prosecution of the war. 

Not a Rich Man's War 

It is German agents, of course, who are most 
eager to arouse the feeling that this is "a rich man's 
war." They spread that lie in spite of the fact 
that the rich can not buy exemptions from con- 
scription in this war as they could in our Civil War; 
in spite of the fact that no one can hire a substitute 
to take his place in the trenches, as one could in the 
Civil War; in spite of the fact that the only exemp- 
tions are allowed to poor men with dependents or to 
workingmsn in vital industries; in spite of the fact 
that the war taxes fall most heavily on the rich, 
and the measures of price control are designed to 
prevent them from exploiting the poor, and the 
excess-profits tax deprives them of the fruits of any 
such exploitation. 

And it is the German agents who are encouraging 
the western feeling that this is "a business man's 
war," because when the Government called for 
volunteers to help organize the business of the 
country on a war basis the business men were most 
free to respond and most fitted by experience to 

20 



fill administrative positions. There are innumer- 
able rumors that some of these men are taking 
advantage of their official knowledge in order to 
make fortunes for themselves. It would be the 
miracle of the world if no such betrayers of public 
faith were ever found among them. And doubtless, 
in this country, as in other countries, congressional 
investigations will discover the occasional grafter 
and dishonest administrator. But it is none the 
less true here, as abroad, that the great body of 
business men who are serving the Government are as 
loyally self-sacrificing as anyone who is behind the 
fighting fines. 

Not in War for Markets 

Recently, in the White House, President Wilson 
was asked by one of our most famous financiers to 
appoint a commission that should safeguard our 
foreign trade during the war, and see to it that 
new foreign markets were made ready for our 
peaceful penetration after the war. And the 
President replied that the Government would not 
appoint such a commission; that this country was 
not fighting to obtain foreign markets; that the 
struggle for foreign markets had been one of the 
predetermining causes of the conflict among the 
European nations, and it had been most difficult to 
make those nations believe that America was not 
secretly inspired by a similar greed for spheres of 
influence and "a place in the sun"; that America 
was not waging a commercial war or seeking any 
selfish advantage; and the Government would 
never appoint a commission that might, by its 
mere existence, misrepresent the motives of our 
people in their support of the nations fighting to 
defend the freedom of the world. 

That pronouncement has been made, again and 

21 



again, in the President's public utterances. He has 
consistently acted upon it in his war policy. And 
the statement that the war is "a rich man's war" 
or "a business man's war" is as deliberate a lie as 
any that the enemy has invented in order to confuse . 
our people and divide them in their allegiance. 

Libels on the Red Cross 

A campaign of mischievous rumors against the 
Red Cross is still under way in spite of the circum- 
stantial disproof that has been given the falsehoods 
through the society's agents everywhere. New 
rumors, new slanders upon Red Cross work and 
Red Cross officials, are put out simultaneously in 
widely separated parts of the country in a way 
that proves preconcertment and direction. All 
these fabrications are designed to discourage loyal 
citizens from giving money or service to the work of 
the society. That is the purpose of the lies about 
Red Cross sweaters sold by department stores; 
about enormous salaries paid to Red Cross officials, 
who are really working without salary; about Red 
Cross sweaters being used at the front to "pack 
guns in"; about the contributed knitted goods being 
unraveled abroad by peasants who wanted the 
yarn, not the manufactured article, etc., endlessly. 
A list of such false reports, with their refutations, 
would require a pamphlet by themselves. The 
same is true of the libels upon the Food Administra- 
tion that aim to arouse hostility to the Govern- 
ment's measures of food conservation. Both cam- 
paigns have been unsuccessful. The loyal support 
of the work of the Red Cross and of the Food Ad- 
ministration has been one of the most remarkable 
achievements of America at war in the eyes of our 
allies. German propaganda here has wholly failed, 
as it has failed against the Liberty loans. 

22 



Libels on the War Department 

A similar drive against the work of the War 
Department has been more successful, probably 
because our unhappy experiences in the days of the 
Spanish- American War prepared the public mind. 
A great many people still believe the story that 
200,000 coffins were sent to France when ship 
tonnage was needed for munitions, although no 
coffins were sent. The stories about "wooden 
guns" still circulate, although the Ordnance Bureau 
has armed our troops with the best rifle on the battle 
line, has provided 1,500,000 rifles of all sorts for 
training camps and field forces, and is now pro- 
ducing the new rifle at the rate of 50,000 a week. 
Alarming reports continue about the shortage of 
American machine guns and heavy ordnance among 
our men at the front, although they are abundantly 
supplied with French machine guns and heavy 
ordnance. Our Ordnance Bureau accepted the 
offer of the French Government to supply our 
troops with the French guns, because these were 
known to be the best on the battle line, because 
there was a sufficient production of them to equip 
our forces, and because the ship tonnage for trans- 
porting such equipment from this country was 
needed for other purposes. In the meantime our 
Ordnance Bureau perfected and brought to produc- 
tion better machine guns than the allies' best, and 
heavy guns are being manufactured here, against 
the time when we shall have more ships to transport 
them and more men trained in their use. By a 
plan of intelligent cooperation with the allies our 
forces in France have had an ample supply of 
m:ul line guns and heavy ordnance. Our immediate 
need of aeroplane protection on the battle front 
has been similarly taken care of. 

23 



When we accepted the German aggressions as 
constituting a state of war, Great Britain and 
France asked from us troops, food, labor, and raw 
materials, and undertook to supplement our war 
equipment out of their surplus until we could estab-. 
lish the necessary new war industries, produce 
the needed machinery, and train manufacturers 
and workmen to direct and handle that machinery. 
If we had waited for our own heavy guns, our own 
boats, our own battle planes, we would have done 
what the Germans wanted. We have carried out a 
plan of cooperation that was arranged with fore- 
sight. The alarming rumors about a "breakdown" 
in equipping our troops in France is the result of a 
general failure to understand that plan. 

Libels on the Medical Service 

German rumors about appalling epidemics in 
our training camps led to a congressional investiga- 
tion, which showed that the men had suffered 
chiefly from measles followed by pneumonia; that 
the death rate had been no higher than among men 
of the same age in civil life; and that no deaths 
had occurred from malaria, typhoid, or dysentery, 
which diseases killed more of our men in the Spanish- 
American War than were slain in battle. These 
rumors are now at rest. Others, equally untrue, 
are afoot, such as the shocking one that the men in 
training have been given bayonets so defective that 
they double when they are stuck into the practice 
dummies . Such a story is incredible enough . More 
incredible is the fact that loyal citizens believe and 
repeat it. 

Similar falsehoods about the War Department 
have been given the authority of print. They were 
accepted apparently on hearsay, without investiga- 
tion. Here are some specimens of them: 

24 



The editor of a national magazine complained, 
concerning the sinking of the Tuscania: 

"After many days and nights nobody, least of 
all Mr. Baker's department, knew which were saved 
and which were lost. In the first place, nobody 
knew who sailed on the Tuscania. Our soldiers are 
not permitted to tell their friends and relatives when 
they are sailing or on what ship or from what port. 
The War Department apparently made no record 
of the fact; indeed, the War Department publicly 
announced that it did not precisely know what units 
had sailed aboard the Tuscania, to say nothing of 
what individuals. The ship carried a roster of 
those aboard, but the roster sank with the ship," 
etc. 

Now, it is not true that "nobody knew who sailed 
on the Tuscania." There was a complete passenger 
list on file in the War Department. That list gave 
the name and designation of everyone on board, 
soldier or civilian, excepting the crew, whose names 
were on file in the Cunard offices. 

The War Department did not publicly announce 
that "it did not know precisely what units had 
sailed aboard the Tuscania." The War Depart- 
ment knew, and told the press what units were 
aboard. 

It is true that the ship carried a roster, and, so 
far as is known, the roster sank with the ship; but 
duplicates of this roster were on file in the War 
Department. 

It is not true that "after many days and nights 
nobody, least of all Mr. Baker's department, knew 
which were saved and which were lost." The sur- 
vivors were landed at many points on the coasts of 
Ireland and Scotland. As fast as they could be 
gathered together their names were cabled to the 
War Department. In giving their names to the 

25 



newspapers there was no more delay than was 
necessary to insure that the information should be 
accurate. 

It is not true, as the editor wrote further: "Each 
man wore a metal tag on his wrist, but by a dis- 
pensation of Mr. Baker's humanitarianism the tag 
was blank." The regulations of the War Depart- 
ment require the captain of each company to see 
that his men wear metal identification disks on a 
cord around the neck — not on the wrist. If these 
disks were missing or blank it was by no "dispensa- 
tion of Mr. Baker's humanitarianism." It was in 
contravention of his orders. 

Similarly, the correspondent of a New York 
newspaper published an account of how the War 
Department had assigned 18 major generals to one 
ship sailing for France. A readjustment was made, 
he said, so that only 5 went on the boat.. He con- 
tinued: " 'But,' said the man who told the story, 
'that wasn't the funniest part of it. Code mes- 
sages were sent to each of the major generals order- 
ing him to be ready to start for over-seas service on 
a specified date, and 12 of the 18 replied over the 
open wire, in unadorned English, "I will be ready 

to sail for France on ," and added the date 

mentioned in the code message.' " 

This was not a very serious slander. It merely 
convicted the War Department of ridiculous in- 
efficiency and made 12 major generals look like 
anonymous idiots. But the fact is that the War 
Department does not transport its forces overseas. 
That is done by the Navy. The War Department 
does not assign officers to the ships on which they 
sail. That is done by the commander of the port 
from which the ship leaves. The War Department 
merely notifies the officer to report for duty at the 
port; he may not sail for weeks after arriving there. 

26 



Consequently, the department would not wire him 
in code and he would not need to answer in code. 

Libels on Mr. Garfield 

The editor of another national magazine, in 
criticizing Fuel Administrator Garfield's closing 
order, repeated the discouraging report that "Mr. 
Garfield had no knowledge of coal mining or coal 
distribution, and no executive experience whatever." 

This statement was widely circulated and gen- 
erally believed. It is wholly untrue. In 1901 Mr. 
Garfield became manager of a Cleveland syndicate 
that developed the coal mines in the Piney Fork 
district of Ohio, built a railroad from those mines 
to a Lake Erie port, and finally sold the properties 
to the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Co., at 
whose request Mr. Garfield remained a director and 
vice president of the mining company. 

He was president of the Cleveland Chamber of 
Commerce in 1898, was a member of its executive 
committee for several years, and as chairman of its 
building committee conducted the construction of 
its present building. 

He helped to organize the Cleveland Trust Co., 
which has been successful as one of the most ably 
managed financial institutions of Cleveland. He 
was one of its directors, its vice president, its coun- 
sel, and a member of its executive committee from 
the time of its organization until he retired from 
practice as a lawyer in November, 1903. 

During his years of practice he had sole charge 
of an estate that had interests in Lake Michigan 
iron mines, in a shipbuilding firm, in real estate, 
and in various business companies. 

He took part in the reorganization of the Con- 
neaut Water Co., which he helped to save from 
financial shipwreck and to put in the way of its 

27 



present success. He assisted in forming the Citizens' 
Association of Cleveland, which freed the city 
from the control of an ancient gang of corruptionists. 
He was for 11 years chairman of the national com- 
mittee for the reform of our Consular Service — a 
committee composed of representatives of various 
chambers of commerce and boards of trade. 

After 16 years of practice as a lawyer he became 
a member of the faculty of Princeton University, 
in 1904. A few years later he was elected president 
of Williams College, where he was as successful 
in directing its business interests as in overseeing its 
educational activities. 

Using Partisan Prejudice 

It seems impossible that such falsehoods as these 
about the War Department and the Fuel Admin- 
istration could have been invented for partisan 
purposes by men who were less eager to win the 
war than to win an election. It is much more 
probable that, like the story about the 200,000 
coffins and the drunkenness and immorality among 
our troops, they are pro-German falsehoods in- 
vented for the purpose of weakening the confidence 
of the American people in the Government's war 
work. Nevertheless, their credulous acceptance 
by the press and the general public has been hailed 
with joy by the enemy, and German propagandists 
have reprinted and circulated them in South 
American countries with delight. 

In that way the Kaiserite takes his profit from the 
quarrels of partisanship as he takes it from every 
other quarrel, racial, religious, or economic, which 
he can stir up among us. In a free country criticism 
must be free. No one in his senses will doubt the 
loyalty of many critics of the Government who have 

28 



This book is one of several issued 
by the Committee on Public Infor- 
mation for the purpose of acquainting 
Americans with the methods of 
enemies in their efforts to weaken 
the morale of our people. 

Read it carefully — and ask others 
to read it. Additional copies in 
small lots will be sent free upon- 
request. Address the Division of 
Distribution, of the 

COMMITTEE 
ON PUBLIC INFORMATION 
8 Jackson Place, Washington, D. C. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




010 464 850 



